For All The Cyberwar Talk, Turns Out There Have Been Fewer Attacks On The Pentagon's Network

from the cyberlull dept

For all the recent talk of "cyberwar," with particular emphasis on the idea that hackers in foreign countries were bombarding US gov't and military institutions with constant internet attacks, it now turns out that "incidents of malicious cyber activity" against the Pentagon have been on the decline this year. There still have been plenty of attempts to breach the network, but it's a much lower number than in the past. And that seems to contradict what Pentagon officials have been saying.

Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who's been leading the charge for why the Pentagon should be in charge of cybersecurity, recently claimed that the frequency was increasing exponentially. Except that's not true, apparently. The NSA, who is the main group within the Defense Department that wants to handle cybersecurity, apparently had its boss specifically (falsely) claim that he was "alarmed by the increase, especially this year." Of course, there are still plenty of attacks -- no one is denying that, but it's even more evidence that the folks looking to use this to gain more power are clearly exaggerating what's going on.

Re: @2

Doublespeak/RIAA = Coincidence?

Is it really any surprise that they would do this? Also, isn't it a neat (or not) coincidence that the RIAA does the exact same thing - talk a lot about how they are being threatened at every turn yet occasionally admit that they are doing better than ever?

It seems clear that right now various federal agencies are jockeying for position to call "shotgun" for which one of them should assume operational control of a "cyber security" organization. After all, operational control defines which agency would receive funding to create new bureaucracy.

Fortunately, all of this does seem a bit premature since "cyber security" protocols is a basic research study being examined under the auspices of a DARPA program that is using the collective research and engineering expertise of both Johns Hopkins and Lockheed Martin.

I take some measure of solace in DARPA's participation since it is one of the very few federal agencies noted to be at the cutting edge of research into various projects that have led to many of the research advances that have morphed into the development of methods and equipment that today we as a nation take for granted, such as the important role it played in the development of the ARPANET.

At the same time, DARPA has in my experience been one of the very few federal agencies that serve the very important role of honest broker.

It's typical, though, of policing and security agencies to set up straw man issues and pound away at them even if there's little or no evidence to back it up.

You gotta admit, though, that "cyber-terrorism" has a nice ring to it. It gets the attention of media and legislators who will go on and on about it while quoting the "experts" that thought the whole thing up.

But what can they do when the data says the Pentagon is getting attacked fewer times now than before?

Take credit for it!

Then tell legislators and the media that they need more cash to keep the trend line going down. Never mind that they've done all of nothing.